"... the #NeverTrump forces who warned that the entire campaign was a swindle by someone who was temperamentally and intellectually ill-equipped to run for president, let alone be president:"

...................................................................................................................................................................
Not the campaign they were promised
By Jennifer Rubin, August 24, 2016

Because Donald Trump willfully forgets what he said a week ago, let alone a year ago, and the mainstream media have short attention spans, it is easy to forget the arguments that supported Trump’s quest for the nomination. None of them turned out to be true in the general election, which comes as no surprise to the #NeverTrump forces who warned that the entire campaign was a swindle by someone who was temperamentally and intellectually ill-equipped to run for president, let alone be president:

1. Trump was going to self-finance. Not only is he not self-financing, he’s a rotten fundraiser. He and his SuperPACs are badly behind Hillary Clinton and her SuperPAC, giving her a huge TV ad advantage. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “All told, Trump allies’ efforts to raise money continue to fall far short of those of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters, which means the Republican will struggle to match the former secretary of state on the airwaves. Priorities USA Action has already spent about $43 million on TV ads backing Mrs. Clinton, on top of another $61 million used by the Clinton campaign in last two months.” He is a drain on the party, not a boon as he relies on the RNC for functions normally performed by campaigns.

2. Trump was going to hire the “best” people and use his business acumen to run the best GOP campaign ever. He’s on his third campaign chairman. He has no ground game to speak of. His surrogates range from ineffective (Sen. Jeff Sessions) to unhinged (Rudy Giuliani). Beginning with the convention, the summer has been one disaster after another, giving the Trump campaign the distinction of being the worst presidential campaign operation ever.

3. He was going to redo the electoral map. He sure has. In recent state polling Clinton is running away with Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and is in a statistical tie in deep-red Missouri and may win Arizona and Georgia. Trump’s vaunted appeal with white voters isn’t what it was cracked up to be (he’s barely ahead) and in no way is it sufficient to offset his deficits with virtually every other group. Part of this stems from Trump’s misunderstanding of the primary electorate. He claimed he was bringing in “new” voters; rather, he was merely inducing general election voters to cast ballots in the primary. There is no secret stash of white Republican voters.

4. Trump’s toughness on terrorists was going to appeal to women, the so-called soccer moms. His gender gap is enormous in battleground states. Mitt Romney won white women; Trump seems headed to lose that group. (In Ohio, for example, he is losing white women by a margin of 38 percent to 46 percent.)

5.  Trump was going to release his taxes. Everyone from a former IRS commissioner to ex-adviser Roger Stone is telling him to do it. By refusing to do so, he hands Clinton a weapon and evens the playing field in the game of “Who’s least transparent?”

6. The Trump kids were a big asset. It is hard to say he wouldn’t have been worse without them, but for various reasons we have discussed, they are not much help. They haven’t won over millennials or kept their father on an even keel.

7. Trump is a media genius. On one level he was — in the primaries. He knew just how to tantalize the media and chew up attention. Now, however, the media are his enemy (about which he complains incessantly) and he is relegated to Fox News. His obsessive Twitter use more often than not reveals how unhinged and self-deluded he can be.

8.  Trump could be presidential. There was never going to be a pivot. He’s the same in public and private according to those who know him. He’s the same in the primary and the general election. He’s proved himself so unpresidential, so unfit for office, that even an untrustworthy, status quo politician like Clinton is likely to crush him.
...................................................................................................................................................................